SIDELINES / rio helmi

ON AGAIN: BALI SPIRIT FESTIVAL 09
Having attended more than my fair share of official openings in Indonesia, I really tried to come late to avoid the droning speeches. Alas, it doesn’t always work. Having barely missed another modern, highly chromatic presentation of Balinese dance, I walked in as Ubud’s massage guru Kt Arsana was delivering [...]

On Saturday I had on my photographer hat to give a talk for the Bali Creative Community’s day long Creative Entrepreneur’s workshop. I had planned to talk about the importance of keeping the flame alive during our current economic downturn.
As it turned out the speaker before me was music entrepreneur Robin Malau, who gave [...]

the justifications of the powerful
I haven’t thought about this much recently, but a recent request on twitter by Kristie Lu Stout of CNN asking for opinions on whether or not cultural treasures belong in their country of origin got me going. These tweets are to be used for an upcoming live debate in Hong Kong [...]

The Moor’s last sigh: lost treasures of a real civilization
This Easter I finally made it to Andalusia, Southern Spain to see the Santa Semana week of Easter celebrations in Sevilla. I was curious to see how much similarity it might still bear to the holy week in Larantuka, East Flores where a 450 year old [...]

HOLA TURISTA (1)
No regrets having tacked on a trip to Spain on to my job in Milan. Thought I would give a quick run down on recommendations on places where we stayed and ate! (Don’t worry I was travelling with non-vegetarian Thais who are fanatic about food, so it’s pretty across the board!). Remember, the [...]

OK I don’t have any numbers to back this up, and it is totally flying by the seat of my pants, but after 5 days in Milan and 3 days in Barcelona I am not sure I am seeing a recession hitting hard in Europe. In Milan the Duomo was crawling with Italian and foreign [...]